Once upon a time, I had intended to make these during the Spring Cleaning New Recipe Challenge.

We tend to go through a lot of bars, as Josh calls them. He used to take two daily in his lunches to snack on before he started to reduce his sugary, starchy intake. But I’ve been in a mood to have bars lately. And I’ve seen TONS of recipes for homemade ones on the Pinteresting Blogosphere that got my creative juices flowing. I mean seriously. Mix oats and rice krispies with sticky goo and extras? Sign me up!

And I’m not sure how my body would react to processed bars nowadays.

I did know that I wanted to make chewy, as opposed to crispy, bars. And no-bake is preferable. I decided on one from Money Saving Mom.

And I decided today was the day to make them because I wanted something a bit substantial (and homemade) for the trip up north. Supposedly, they freeze well, as well, something I am going to test while we are gone (because my dad wants to try them…so I will freeze a few for him to try). I made them into the long bar size as well as the squarish ones. Muffin and I may have already sampled them. I followed the recipe almost word-for-word from the original post, but there are a few cautions that I want to kind of stress as I go over the recipe.

1/2 cup additional mix-in ingredients, optional (I used shredded coconut. I plan on using the marshmallow bits next time. You can also use chopped nuts, dried fruit, seeds, or candy pieces)

1/2 cup honey

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

2/3 cup peanut butter (I wonder what Biscoff would be like?)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup chocolate chips (I used miniature)

Combine Rice Krispies, oats, and the additional mix-in ingredient in a large bowl.

In a saucepan, mix the honey, brown sugar, and salt. Over medium-low heat (although I bumped it to medium after the sugar started to melt), stir until the mixture comes to a complete boil for 30-60 seconds (a bit longer is okay–do not skimp on this–otherwise your mixture will not come together).

Remove from the heat and stir in the peanut butter and vanilla until smooth.

Pour over the dry ingredients and mix well. (I would use a silicon spatula or spoonula because this is a super-sticky mixture) Let cool at least 10 minutes before mixing in the chocolate chips. I didn’t and had a melty mess on my hands (but a yummy melty mess).

Press into a greased 9×13 pan and let cool before cutting into bars. I made square-shaped ones and “granola bar stick” shaped ones.

Note: I’ve found it best to spray measuring cups with non-stick spray before measuring honey or peanut butter. It helps the ingredients empty “cleaner.”

As I said, next time I hope to use graham cracker crumbs and the marshmallow bits to make a s’mores-like bar.

The best part? In addition to being Muffin Approved (and filling a Muffin who is notorious for wanting several snacks shortly before dinner), they don’t taste chemically. That is something that is an issue with the store bought bars. I can pronounce and identify each of the ingredients, too.

By the way, I’m going through and uploading PDFs of my recipes to GoogleDocs so that an easily printable version is available. Click the button below to access how I made the granola bars. You will start to see that button on many of my recipe pages (those that don’t already have a printable from RecipePage).